Endorsement: Harris Clear Choice Over Wallace-Like Trump

Anderson Observer Editorial Board

In 1968, George Wallace received almost 10 million votes in the United States presidential election, taking 13.5 percent of all ballots cast, running as a third-party candidate. He won five Southern states, but not South Carolina where he received 215,430 votes (32.3 percent) to Richard Nixon’s 254,062 votes (38.089 percent) and Hubert Humphrey’s 197,486 (29.61 percent).

His central issues were the sins of big government, public education, busing, and crime – essentially total opposition to civil rights laws and most of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. Race was a common thread, although by 1968 it was folded into a broader set of grievances with a class-based message.

As the campaign progressed Wallace talked less and less about race, though he never disavowed his fiery opposition to civil rights for all Americans.

The national press covering the Wallace campaign fell back on old stereotypes, even though not many had attended a Wallace rally.

They missed the deeper connections he was making with the electorate, the ‘little man’, the ‘ordinary American’, who more often than not was white, blue-collar, and rural. He courted those who felt looked down upon. Some of his supporters were outright bigots, many were not. The national media found it particularly difficult to explain how the Wallace campaign engaged voters who had crossed over from other party affiliations as well as those who did not normally participate in politics.

Yet since his support came from pockets all over the country, his followers were difficult to stereotype. He was popular in places such as Flint, Michigan, Anaheim, California, and South Boston, Massachusetts. Wallace voters were more likely to call themselves FDR-Democrats than anything else. Elvis Presley, returning to live concerts after a seven-year break, had a ‘Wallace for President’ sign at Graceland.

Wallace argued the establishment had let his people down. They felt harmed by institutions that were meant to protect them at all levels of government, political parties, national media, higher education, and religious leaders. Wallace knew how to excite his supporters while keeping the subject of race in the background, focusing instead on local control of schools, protecting private property rights, and law and order.

It could be said that the call for ‘law and order’ was thinly veiled racism and Wallace took advantage of the fears that people had, but he did not create them.

Wallace spoke for an America that felt its familiar world slipping out of its grasp. It was not only racial hierarchies that were in danger of disappearing; Wallace’s supporters felt threatened by challenges to women’s traditional roles as homemakers and to the place of Christianity in the public sphere, and by a condescending media that his constituents felt romanticized small-town life while encouraging contempt for it.

Add to this the war in Vietnam, and nightly announcements on the news of how many Americans were killed each day in that war, and Wallace built a platform that promised a return to a simpler way of life in America.

He stoked fears of those in the country who they felt this view of their country was vanishing before their eyes. It’s easier to dismiss Wallace with labels like ‘racist’ than to try to understand what he stood for, why he was popular, and why every populist who has run for the presidency since 1968 has borrowed from his style and even his policies.

Sound familiar?

This year America faces a time of national crisis.

The election brings into play a first, a challenge to constitutional assurances of an unimpeachable rule of law.

Former President Donald Trump has committed himself for the past nine years to promoting nationalism, isolationism and a marked favoritism to the country’s most wealthy companies and individuals.

And he has done it in a brazen fashion no major candidate in history has exhibited, including Wallace.

His attacks on the nation itself, on the military, his support of Russia and other nations with dictatorial leaders, encouragement of dangerous domestic militia groups, coupled with a dogged contempt for the truth, make him a singular figure in American political history.

Trump has repeatedly vowed retaliation on his political enemies, real and perceived, if reelected. Even Nixon in his waning years in office never went so far.

Trump so far has not won a national popular vote. His party lost ground in 2018 and 2022.

Meanwhile in much of the country, especially in rural areas, his support remains strong. His financial support from billionaires such as Elon Musk and Leonard Leo have revealed agendas and priorities for a potential second term.

Leo, the influential American attorney and conservative activist, played a significant role in shaping the judicial landscape during the Trump administration, particularly in the appointment of Supreme Court justices. His efforts have had a lasting impact on U.S. law and politics, particularly in the realm of judicial appointments.

Trump has repeatedly promised even more tax cuts for the country’s wealthiest individuals.

Of those who served in his first administration, only two of 42 cabinet members support his bid for reelection. And additional 200-plus staff members from previous Republican presidents and Republican presidential candidates have endorsed the Democratic ticket. Even former Vice President Dick Cheney has, for the first time, endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate.

These include top officials who once surrounded Trump. Vice-President Mike Pence, former Defense Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chief of staff John Kelly, the former national-security advisers John Bolton and H. R. McMaster, and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley have all publicly declared Trump as an unfit candidate and a threat to national security.

The economic policies he has put forth in his rallies would cripple the U.S. economy. Tariffs of up to 20 percent on all imported goods from China would put the burden on the Americans who can least afford the inflation such a tax would bring. Other ideas, such as removing taxes on Social Security benefits, would empty already precarious government coffers and put the program itself at risk.

His judicial appointments have already wreaked havoc on the court systems. His appointees have continued to undermine regulatory protections and allowed industries which pollute the air and water to easily challenge any environmental law they oppose.

Trump’s effect on the judiciary would be no less alarming. In his first term, he appointed three Supreme Court Justices, who played an essential role in eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion. Twenty-two states have since either restricted the procedure or banned it outright, and states in the latter category (including Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi) have some of the country’s highest rates of maternal and infant mortality.

During the McCarthyism of the 1950s, loyalty oaths popped up all over as conditions of employment. Trump would take such oaths a step farther, asking for personal loyalty oaths to him and his agenda.

Meanwhile across the globe, nations await the outcome of an election that could put many traditional U.S. allies in jeopardy, including NATO.

Trump’s praise of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğa offer a glimpse at the style of government he admires, at least from a distance.

And in all of these and other areas, including healthcare, Trump’s policies are vague and lacking in details. Where candidates once offered stacks of detailed white papers on their every position, today it’s about sound bites at rallies.

He has also refused to say if he would respect the will of the people on Nov. 5, instead saying if he does not win it is because the election is crooked, perhaps the most unpresidential words to leave his mouth, and that’s saying a lot.

There is much we don’t know about a Trump second term, but what we do know from his own words is troubling. The same is true of his running mate J.D. Vance, who less than four years ago likened Trump to Hitler, a charge which did not seem an insult since the former president has repeatedly stated that Hitler “did some good things” and admired the German leader’s generals.

Meanwhile Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz offer a different path to the country’s future. Harris, being thrown into the race three months before the election, has put forth a measured and understandable platform akin to traditional presidential candidates of the past.

Though, like Trump, some of Harris’ economic proposals lack specifics, the goals are more detailed and are aimed at helping working- and middle-class Americans and would not shipwreck an economy with Nasdaq hitting record highs on Tuesday, unemployment at the lowest mark in 55 years and inflation – at 2.4 percent – back to normal ranges. She is also pledging tax breaks for the middle class and to go after big businesses which participate in anti-competitive practices.

Harris has promised to protect the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid. For many who are self-employed the ACA has been a literal life saver, and older adults are healthier because of Medicare. States which have expanded Medicaid have also seen a marked improvement in long-term health of the poor and working poor.

Proposals to make housing more affordable are also on her economic agenda.

As Attorney General of California, she pursued several high-profile cases against polluters, including fighting ConocoPhillips’ endangering water supplies. As Vice President, she cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, bringing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of new spending and tax breaks for clean-energy projects.

In foreign policy, Harris is representing a more traditional presidential approach which supports America’s historical allies and alliances and opposes aggression of hostile nations to assure the country’s global leader status. This includes supporting the military and supporting service members, veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors.

Harris rebuked China for expanding its territorial footprint. She has promised America’s support to the region in the face of intimidation and coercion in the South China Sea.

The choice for a better future for America is clear. A second Trump administration would be a disaster for America and its role as global leader. Harris at the very least offers a hope for a brighter future for the middle class and a return to historical sanity and leadership in American government which has been in chaos since Trump ran for president in 2016. The Anderson Observer Editorial Board does not often endorse candidates, but we could not ignore the importance of backing the importance of electing an overwhelmingly more qualified candidate in this year’s election: Kamala Harris.

The Anderson Observer Editorial Board is made of of five journalists with a combined 200 years in the newspaper business.